


honey, don't feed it (it will come back)

by Eustace (Sibylline)



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (angst because what else would it be really), (catholicism because what else would it be really), Angst, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Max is a unintentional emotional support dog, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roman Catholicism, but he gets a temporary dog instead, these boys are not good at feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:57:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6686383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sibylline/pseuds/Eustace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Frank needs a dogsitter (while he goes upstate to detonate a warehouse full of heroin and the people dealing it) and Matt fits the bill. Where Matt's crawling out from the wreckage, and Foggy told him that he should get a dog, back when he thought Matt was just clumsy (and when Foggy was still speaking to him).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a Tuesday morning, and Matt’s still crawling out of the wreckage of Nelson and Murdock. More specifically, he’s spending a lot of time lying on the couch and/or meditating with the hopes that one or both of those things will make broken ribs and a broken wrist knit faster. Claire had told him that he needed about three days worth of sleep, but she was lowballing it. Claire had told him to climb down off that cross, and oh, he’s trying. But it’s been three days, and he’s not resurrected or redeemed, his head still hurts and his wrist is still broken.   

Still, he can hear Frank Castle coming from the time he’s in the lobby of the apartment building, and he can hear that Frank’s carrying something. So help him God, if Frank’s here to shoot him in the head, Matt might just thank him for it, as long as he makes it quick. (it's unlikely, given the effort Frank's put into keeping him alive, so far, but with Frank, homicide is always a possibility) Matt’s wearing a pair of sweatpants and shitty hoodie from law school, and okay, it’s Foggy’s hoodie, so what. It’s perfectly soft and broken-in (even though it doesn’t smell like Foggy any more; he had to wash it after he bled on it the third time). So he considers changing his clothes while Frank makes it up the five flights of stairs between the lobby and his door, but decides, as with many (most) things lately: _fuck it._ And he goes to answer the door. 

He can hear the panting before he gets to the door, layered over the sound of Frank’s breathing. Frank smells like blood, and he has a dog. Only that last part is unusual.

“Hello, Frank. You smell like blood. Why do you have a dog?” There’s tension crackling across Frank’s shoulders, Matt can hear his knuckles creaking: old fractures and clenched hands.

 

Frank stares at him; he expected a fist to the face and not anything like a welcome. It’s Matt’s left wrist in a cast, not his right, and he could do some damage to both Frank’s face and his own half-healed bones with the cast, if he wanted to. But he doesn’t _want_ to. And right, Matt finally submitted and swallowed one of the painkillers that Claire gave him, maybe that’s why he feels like he’s moving underwater, and why the filter between his mouth and brain seems to have just vanished.

 

“This is Max.” Max thunks his stubby tail against the door at the sound of his name. And, well, _that_ gives him a name but answers precisely nothing else. 

“You should come inside. Are you wearing your own blood, or someone else’s?” Frank hesitates for half a second before he comes in, and even then he stays standing just inside the closed door, stranded in open space, while the dog snuffles the air.

“Someone else’s.” That’s a half-lie, but Frank’s pulse barely falters. Maybe being bloodied is such a natural state to Frank, by now, that he doesn’t consciously register it as a lie.

“You can sit on the couch. Another bloodstain won’t matter, at this point.” Matt drifts toward the kitchenette. “You want coffee? A beer?”

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“So, coffee?” He pours Frank a cup. He made some hipster organic free trade single source whatever this morning, and it’s really good, once you get past the embarrassment of the coffee snobbery. _Shit,_ he said that out loud. He snaps his teeth shut to keep his stream-of-consciousness narration confined within his own head. Frank takes his coffee black. Matt remembers that. Frank is on the couch and the dog, Max the Dog, is on the floor, sitting on one of Frank’s feet as if he can pin him down and keep track of him that way, through the physics of his body. Max the Dog is innocent, doesn’t understand human nature. (Neither does Matt, really, but Matt’s not innocent).

“Did you take something?” Frank takes the cup of coffee, and there’s a note of genuine concern hidden in the gravel of his voice. “Pills, another bullet to the head?”

“Claire gave me some painkillers. They’re stronger than I thought they’d be, it’s. I don’t know. I don’t think I like it. But, you’re the only one I let shoot me in the head, I’m sentimental that way.” That earns him a cracked little laugh from Frank. Matt takes the armchair, and it’s much more comfortable than he remembers. He could just sit here forever, he thinks, he feels boneless, but Frank’s over there, jangling tension off of tight shoulders and a clenched jaw. If Frank keeps holding the mug that tight, he’s going to break it, and that would be a waste of both the mug and the coffee.

There’s a trick, they tell you, when interviewing, which is to say nothing. It’s harder than you’d think, something like conversational chicken. Your average human gets uncomfortable by the time you hit seven seconds of dead air, starts to talk when you get to ten seconds of silence, just to fill the space. Blurts out whatever they’ve  been trying _not_ to say, sometimes. It works in therapist’s offices, confessional booths, and on airplanes.

But those rules don’t seem to apply to Frank.

Matt takes a long breath. “Drink your coffee and tell me why you have a dog.”

“Took him from the Irish.” He’s quiet for a minute, then goes on, “They used him for fighting, thought he was no good. Wasn’t that he wouldn’t fight, just wouldn’t fight _for them._ So I took him, nothing else to do with him. A dog like him, they’d put him down if he was in a shelter.” Yeah, Matt knows how it goes, they look at those scars and those wounds,  think: that’s not a family dog, that’s something that bites and needs putting down. Too many dogs and not enough time to see anything under the scars. “But now, well. I’ve got things that need taking care of, and someone needs to take care of him. And he likes you.”

Frank thinks that the dog likes him, based, Matt guesses, off the fact that Max didn’t take off one of his limbs when he broke into Frank’s apartment. Matt doesn’t have the heart to tell Frank that the dog can be swayed with a handful of kibble and a few kind words. (Matt hardly blames the dog)

This is the thing that’ll bring Frank Castle here, that’ll make him swallow down the gristle of his pride, and it’s a dog. What strange things drive us. Matt would laugh, but Frank wouldn’t appreciate it, wouldn’t understand that it’s not him that Matt’s laughing at.  Sure, thinks Matt. Foggy told him that he should get a dog. Of course, Foggy said that when he still thought that Matt earned his bruises through clumsiness, when he thought that Matt just needed some help navigating the physical world. When Foggy still thought that Matt was worth guiding.

“Sure.” Matt’s gotten himself into worse, but then. Matt can’t even take care of himself, but Frank trusts him with a dog. Frank finally takes a sip of the coffee, makes a little surprised noise that’s barely audible even to Matt, but it adds a measure of proof towards Matt’s hypothesis that Frank’s just torturing himself with all that shitty instant coffee, which just tastes like hot acid and ashes; Matt’s familiar with that habit from personal experience. It would be easier if they could wish and want for nothing, though you’d be less human for it (that’s the goal, really).*

“Yeah. I can do that. But I suppose I have to ask, Frank, what kind of business it is you’re taking care of,”

“It’s a one man job.”

“Is it the kind of job where you end up taped to a chair with a drill bit through your foot?”

“You worried about me, Red?” There’s sarcasm there, that casual fuck-off, fuck-you tone, but Matt can tell from the way he’s tensed up that he’s angry, too. And Matt doesn’t know what answer Frank wants. Matt’s not even sure what the truth is.

“I’m asking because my bulletproof long johns won’t fit over this cast. So if you don’t give me some level of detail that lets me know you’re not leaving the dog with me because you think you’re going to wind up dead, I’m going to take this cast off with whatever I can find in the kitchen cabinets. I’ll call Karen or Foggy to take care of Max, because I’m betting at least one of them will still take my calls, and then I’m going to follow you.”

“You’re gonna parkour your way across the rooftops of New York while hopped up on painkillers?”

“When you put it that way, yeah, that sounds exactly like the stupid kind of thing that I would do.”

“I’m cleaning up the trail of slime the Blacksmith left behind. A couple of low-level assholes are still dealing what’s left of his dope. They’ve got it stashed in a warehouse upstate, I think, but it’ll take me time to track it down without tipping them off. Then I plan on blowing it up. That sound okay to you, Red, or you want to give me another lecture on how killing is bad?”

“You want to give me another lecture on how hope is just another four letter word? Tell me how to take care of your dog.”

Max eats kibble, whatever, he’s not picky, a cup in the morning and another at night. You gotta tell him to go ahead before he’ll eat, he waits for permission. He barks at strangers, will shush if you tell him to. (Frank makes a shushing noise to demonstrate) He doesn’t bite– unless you tell him to. He’s well-trained, Frank says, hands Matt the leash and cups the dog’s big face in his hands, tells him to be good. Tells him he’ll be back, like the dog understands, or maybe he’s not just talking to the dog. Asks Matt if he has any questions, as Matt runs a palm over the dog’s shoulder blades; Max is all short glossy fur over muscle, little nicks and flecks of scar tissue. Matt says no, he doesn’t have questions, and that’s a lie. They’re just not about the dog. Questions like, _why do you trust me?_

Frank hesitates, not much of a hesitation, but enough for Matt to notice; he wants to say something else. But he doesn’t.

“Thanks for the coffee, Red,” he says, leaves the mug on the coffee table and exits via the open window, the fire escape. Max’s gaze follows him to the window, stares out and lets out a mournful whine as the sound of combat boots on metal trails away.

Matt wonders whether he’s just given him tacit permission for homicide. Whether that makes him complicit. But he’s always been complicit, hasn’t he? Since he refused to take that shot, since he chose Frank over Grotto, since all the lines between justice and retribution were blurred by blood, and redemption took a knife to the chest that was meant for someone else.

 

Frank had told him on the roof, that he would _do what’s required_. Which is only half an answer, or not really an answer at all. A man without regard for his mortality, how does he commit to taking care of a dog when he could be dead tomorrow? He’s a  man who tried to convince a courtroom that he was a monster, who was half-convinced of it himself, and Matt wonders where saving a dog fits into that. Other than, once you give something a name, you have an obligation, and Frank has certain compulsions about fulfilling his obligations.   

He wonders whether Frank had a dog, once. Before everything. Frank in suburbia (like Alice in Wonderland, like some other half-dreamed world). _Can’t imagine_ , is his first impulse, but he can. What he must have been, with a lawn, amidst cereal boxes and crayons, instead of munitions. A Frank Castle without his hair cropped close to the shape of his skull, without bruises under his eyes and on his knuckles. Who smelled like anything other than sweat and gun oil, who smiled without blood on his teeth, and smelled like cut grass and aftershave.  If he knew, then, the magnitude of what he could lose. 

 

Matt lets the dog up on the couch, and closes his eyes. The dog settles into the curve behind Matt’s knees, and Matt slips under the surface of sleep.

 

***

  
The painkillers wear off, after a while, but Matt still has a dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *the line on wanting to wish for nothing (and being less human for it) is bastardized from Shitty Horoscopes (https://shittyhoroscopeszine.tumblr.com). Go look at them and love them.


	2. Chapter 2

The painkillers wear off, after a while, but Matt still has a dog. 

The  morning disappeared somehow, the living room’s been swallowed by the warmth of late afternoon sun, and Matt uncurls to find the leash that Frank left. Max trots over, sits rapt while his tail taps the floorboard like a metronome. 

A circuit of the block, and they’re back where they started, and it’s time to feed the dog. Matt gives him kibble, then sears a steak in the pan; he asked himself whether he was hungry and he didn’t know the answer. So he feeds the dog and he feeds himself; the dog’s hunger is more reliable than his own. He cuts thin strips of meat against the grain, saves all the scorched edges and the ring of fat for Max. And yeah, okay, he’s bribing the dog, but Frank doesn’t have to know. It’s not affection that he’s trying to buy, it’s just that Max telegraphs pure joy with each bite: ears perked up like little banners, tail wagging so hard that it moves half his body. And physical embodiment of pure  _ happiness  _ from something as simple as a few bites of food seems somehow miraculous to Matt.

 

Maybe it’s a wonderment because Matt’s used to ignoring what his body tells him, overriding the commands of his lizard-brain, until it doesn’t bother telling him what it wants any more. Sleep is a luxury, food is fuel for the machine: drink three more cups of coffee to wash down the protein bar you just ate. The coffee came out of a machine and tastes like battery acid plus something from the Gowanus, the protein bar tastes like nothing plus chalk. 

When he washes the dishes, he finds Frank’s empty coffee mug by the sink; when he washes it he tries to scrub away the ghost of the touch of Frank’s fingertips to his as he gave him the cup; empties whatever Frank had left unsaid down the sink with the rest of the dirty water. 

He likes the hipster coffee, this is the truth, he wanted Frank to like it, needs to know if Frank has the same weakness (wanting things; it is weakness, Stick taught him this. And  _ need _ is another four letter word, like _ hope.) _

_      The mind controls the body. The mind controls the body. _ _  The mind controls the body. _

            But what controls the mind? 

There are ways to shut down the tangle of thoughts. One is meditation. Another is by sliding into the costume and out onto the rooftops and the dark spaces between, listening for a fight, a chance to let every thought narrow down to the way that his opponent’s body moves through space, checking for the friction of a gun in a holster or in the waistband of jeans, listening for the sound of a switchblade: another kind of meditation, where there is only the movement of weapons and fists, the sound of heartbeats and ragged breath and blood moving through the body. But his wrist is trapped in plaster, so the suit lies slumbering in its little tomb. 

So he turns his mind to other work. He’s taken a few cases with the New York Legal Aid Society, paperwork, mostly. They’re grateful for warm bodies and reasonably sharp minds, so he’s asked for cases that have been shifted to back burners, that don’t require appearances in court or firm appointments. He’s not ready to be relied upon, to bear the weight of expectations. Not ready to be anywhere where anyone could see the dark circles beneath his eyes and ask him whether he was all right, where he would paste a smile crooked across his teeth and say that he was fine, just tired, both hoping to be seen and hoping to be left alone.

 

Instead he has cases of asthmatic six-year-olds in housing projects, mold-ridden carpets that the landlords refuse to rip out, while the spores send the kids into attacks and to the ER again and again. So Matt writes letters that threaten to rain down the fury of the ADA, invokes the idea that ripping up a patch of carpet is _ reasonable accommodation _ for a kid who’s had more near-death experiences than anyone that age should. 

It feels pathetic, writing letters when he should be  _ out there _ on the rooftops. But he cages his fury, makes it prowl in between the lines of his writing instead. There are different forms of penance. You get on your knees and pray the rosary till your flesh aches and your fingers are numb. You write letters and use the law as a lever, to shift the cogs of the system half an inch. If you push hard enough and you’re lucky, that half inch can allow a child to live and breathe again in the place she calls home. It still feels, in the scheme of things, a weak candle against the roar of night. He keeps writing. 

Here, Matt’s hands fumble at the tangled knot of the law, until he can fashion it into something to serve his purposes: a tripwire, a snare, a noose, a lifeline. Somewhere out there, Frank is moving through dark leaves, his hands steady; his fingers only twitch when they’re deprived of a weapon and a target. Frank sees a war, out there, and Matt understands it in a way. 

 

A battlefield makes more sense: there are sides, on a battlefield. It would explain the death and the blood and the fire. A war makes more sense: it is something that might be won; something that might end. And at the end, at least, someone might be able to go home. 

 

***

The dog has needs, and Matt sets an alarm, because he can ignore himself and let the days unspool without him, but he won’t ignore what the dog needs. Matt scoops out a cup of kibble at 8 am. He’s sort of fascinated by the joy that Max takes in eating. He doesn’t normally make breakfast,  but if he makes breakfast, Max can have a few bites as a treat. So he makes scrambled eggs, swirls them into the sizzle of butter.

Max sits between the kitchen on the door, so he can see both the door and Matt, watches him cook. Max thinks that everything that Matt does is fascinating, but especially when it involves food. Maybe this is why people get dogs, Matt thinks. He chews thoughtfully, and saves a spoonful for Max. 

        Max wants to go for a walk. 

        Matt takes the dog for a walk. 

There’s the warmth of sun, and the scent of wet earth mixed in with the usual trash-bin-and-concrete smell of the street, and unbidden, Matt thinks of Eliot; April as the cruelest month,  _ breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ memory and desire, stirring/ dull roots with spring rain _ . Eliot became a Catholic, after all; trust him to think of resurrection as a cruelty. Max finds the dull roots of some sidewalk tree to piss on, and Matt snorts internally. Maybe Max prefers the poetry of the romantics. 

Matt is unused to the gentle press of sunlight on the back of his neck. Without the ache of fresh bruises and the itch of half-healed sutures, his body feels foreign; it doesn’t feel right to walk in the sunlight without his skin bearing the reminders of what sleeps in the shadow. Civilian life chafes at him, rough seams against all his raw edges. He naps through the day, sleeps unsteadily at night, longs for the rooftops and the feeling of something breaking under his fists. 

Matt kicks off his shoes, goes back to the couch. Every orbit leads back to the couch. Like his body just remembered how to be tired, now it won’t stop, like a toddler who’s just learned the word,  _ no. _ Max sits by the couch, props his jowls on his crossed paws, and goes to sleep: the dog has an uncomplicated relationship with sleep. Meanwhile, Matt hovers in the no-man’s-land between wake and sleep, thinking. It’s strange. Just the way that it changes the baseline of the apartment, having another living creature there, another heartbeat and another set of lungs to beat and breathe and fill the air. He didn’t think it was empty here, before. Now he doesn’t know. 

He tells himself not to get used to it. 

 

He drifts off at some point, then wakes up gasping, his lip bitten in his sleep and the taste of dirty pennies on his tongue. He can’t remember the dream, is left with just a hollow ache of guilt and a faint sense of shame. Father Lantom had told him  _ Guilt can be a good thing, the soul’s call to action, an indication that your work is not yet finished.  _ But what action? What else does he have left to give? 

He’s said it out loud, not sure if he’s talking to Max. He could be talking to himself. He could be talking to God. It all feels the same at this point, and there’s still no answer. Max just watches him with soft eyes, props his muzzle on Matt’s knee, and sighs. 

Matt considers the sacrament of penance, sometimes. Wonders whether it would help. When he passes the church, his footsteps stutter until the tension of the leash draws him forward again. But it is a sin, to take the body of christ into the vault of your mouth, without confession, and it is a sin to ask for absolution without contrition. He is not contrite.

These things that he has done-- his hands in Karen’s hair, the strawberries in her drugstore-shampoo, the taste of rain on her skin, the way she shivered under his fingertips-- lust is a sin. He can loathe the way he  _ wanted, _ like a fever rising up to leave him dizzied, burning, convinced in that moment that it would be enough, just to have this. He can hate his treacherous wanting, but he cannot hate the brightness of that moment, the stutter of a lit match in a dark and drafty room.  

These things that he has left undone-- Frank in his kitchen, and Matt too tired to find another weapon to throw to knock the gun from his hand. Too tired to persuade someone else that his is the side of the angels, when being good only ever won his father a boxing match and a bullet in a dark alleyway, when being good only ever won Elektra a knife to the chest, when being good only ever won Matt the taste of ashes, because being good has never been enough, and he’s never been good enough. The syntax gets tangled but the point is the same.

He dreams of Elektra; she slices cheese while he lies still beneath her, but she’s holding the wrong knife. She’s careful not to cut him, while he tries to tell her: he wants the knife back. It was never meant for her. She just laughs, a little pitying, as if intentions meant anything, as if they were anything other than the ways we pave our own narrow paths to hell.

He wakes up, choking down the bile that his body tries to reject.   
  


***

 

Matt wants to stay in bed. 

       Max wants to go for a walk. 

Max sticks his nose against the shell of Matt’s ear and huffs a whiskery breath of exasperation. 

       Matt takes the dog for a walk. 

The bag of kibble is running out, so they go to some pet store, buy something grain-free with sweet potato and chicken on the advice of a clerk, because even the dog food in Hell’s Kitchen is becoming gentrified since the Reconstruction. Matt buys the dog a bandana, trusts the lady at the register when she says it’s red. He thinks about asking if they have one with skulls, but it’s April and not Halloween, so chances are not in his favor. The lady at the register says she’s never seen a pit bull as a seeing eye dog before. Matt shrugs, says that this dog is special, which is not technically a lie. He puts the bandana on over Max’s collar, and the dog licks his fingertips. 

 

***

The headaches usually hit in the early afternoon. Matt gets an aura, first: pins and needles creeping up his fingertips. It gives him enough time to get back to the apartment, sit down, get ready before the onslaught. The sound of breaking glass from the recycling bin behind the building, the refrigerator compressor clicking on, everything is the sound of things colliding, everything is overwhelming. A dog’s heartbeat is faster than a human’s. A dog breathes more times per minute than a human. It’s still nice to have something to listen to that’s steady, without having to conjugate meaning from it; dogs don’t require a polygraph. 

They can be five minutes, two hours. They rise and break like relapsing fever. When they end, he commands his legs, gone numb, to rise, so he can stumble toward the shower, cover the cast in plastic, wash the stale sweat from his skin. His body threatens to betray him, headaches and weak knees. Not that he’s given his body any reason for loyalty, he’s only ever pushed it to its limits, then pushed harder.  _ The flesh is weak but the spirit is willing. _ He believed, he believed, but now he’s beginning to think that the flesh simply has a better grasp of the laws of physics.  _ Everything that rises must come down. Or is it converge? _ He sits on the bottom of the tub, draws his knees up to his chest, and covers his head. So Battlin’ Jack wanted him to use his brain instead of his fists, and sure, he got that law degree, but fighting’s in his blood, so whether it’s words or fists, he’ll inflict some damage. It’s just that lately he’s been fighting with himself. He sits until the air is nothing but steam, and his fingertips are wrinked. He never feels any cleaner. He keeps on hoping.   

  
  


***

 

Matt goes to sleep, and Electra’s there. She’s smiling and saying his name,  _ Matthew, _ oh, she’s got a smile like gasoline and the way she says his name is the spark, he’s just dry kindling and that’s fine. But. And then she’s bleeding, poison in her veins and a knife through her heart and fear in her eyes for the first time, all these things breaking her body are things that were meant for him. She’s dead, and it was meant for him. There’s Stick’s voice,  _ jesus, _ like he ever thought he could be anything more than this, but all Stick’s venom is drowned out by some low howl.  __

He wakes up in a cold sweat, his jaw aching from grinding down so tightly. The dog’s across the room, keeping his distance but making a low, constant, mournful noise. It had drawn him out of sleep, from his nightmare.  _ Good dog. _ The dog quiets, crosses the room.  _ Sorry, dog. Didn’t mean to scare you.  _ The dog licks at Matt’s hand, all salt. The dog’s lived with Frank a little while, can’t be the first time he’s woken up to sounds of humans being drowned by their dreams. Matt sighs. Frank said the dog wasn’t allowed up on the bed, so Matt takes the blanket off the bed and lies on the carpet. The dog curls into a tight ball in the bend behind Matt’s knees, tucking the sharp corners of his joints beneath him, and just breathes, warm and  _ alive. _ He tells himself not to get used to it.

_ Why do you trust me? _ Matt mumbles into the carpet, and he’s not sure whether he’s talking to the dog or to Frank, who is out in the woods somewhere, committing homicide and possibly arson too. Almost definitely arson. Frank’s not one for half-measures, after all, it’s one of the things Matt resents about him.

 

***

Frank has spent two days in the middle of the woods, upstate. He’ll spend at least two more, before he’s done. He thinks about Murdock, while he’s cleaning his rifle, one of those things where the mind wanders while the hands are busy.Whichever fire-and-brimstone Puritan came up with that saying,  _ idle hands do the devil’s work,  _ just didn’t have enough imagination. 

Over there, he thought the worst that could happen was, he would bleed out in the sand (sniper’s bullet, soviet-era RPG, shrapnel and screw from an IED, doesn’t matter, dead is dead) and they’d ship him back to his wife in a box. He thought death was the worst that could happen to him, which seems now, like a terrible kind of innocence. Dead isn’t dead after all. 

 

After– in the hospital. When he first woke, he’d wondered if he was dead. Thought for a moment he was, and wondered on what side of things he’d ended up. After – when the nurse took him back to the house. He’d realized that it didn’t matter, that made whatever grade-school catechism ideas of Hell he’d ever had into another kind of innocence. The things this world had to offer made Hell superfluous, really.

Maybe Red’s realized that too. 

Except: as far as Frank can see, Red’s not damned. Not yet. 

He’d thought Matt might just be the devil, that night in the graveyard, when he’d thought he was through with all this (turns out he still doesn’t know how to walk away, looks like he’ll never learn). Before that, he’d thought Matt was something else, chained to a rooftop and still reading the riot act, that combination of violence and naïveté. You shoot a man in the head to make a point, and he divines meaning from cathedral bells. He asks you what parish you went to when you were young enough to still believe in something and worship it. You put a gun to his head, and he keeps trying to preach the gospel of hope, spitting it out through bloody teeth like any martyr. A martyr with his eyes set on crucifixion, or else the stained New York version of an avenging angel who comes with a sword and tongues of flame.

The truth is that he’s something in between, exquisitely human and exquisitely fucked up, it’s just that he’s trying to fight it cause he doesn’t want to be. Wants the world to be black and white, and it’s nothing but grey; it’s never going to be anything but that. 

There’s the sound of tires on gravel in the distance. Frank re-assembles the rifle, sights the scope. It’s time to get to work.    
  
  



	3. 3

 

Matt wants to stay on the couch. Max wants to go for a walk.

 

Max jams his nose like a wedge under Matt’s hand until his palm rests on the the top of his big skull, and Matt gives in, twitches his fingers to skritch right behind those notched ears. Matt feels moderately less like shit than he did a few days ago, which might have something to do with the fact that he’s been sleeping more than four hours a night. Also, he realizes, that he’s managed to feed himself at least two square meals a day since Max has been here, which is maybe an achievement. Matt wants to stay on the couch, but he gets up, puts on shoes. He and Max need more eggs from the store, anyway.

 

Matt takes the dog for a walk.

 

They’re rounding a corner when Matt nearly bumps into someone; Max pulls him to the left just in time, and Matt’s apologizing reflexively before he realizes. It’s Foggy. The apology dies in his throat, but he still spits out what’s left of it. Not that Foggy doesn’t deserve that apology and more, it’s just that it’s suddenly inadequate in the face of things.

 

“You have a dog.”

 

“Uh. I’m more… looking after him for a friend.” The logical question here, the one that Matt can almost _hear_ through Foggy’s skull, is _what friend?_ (because Matt doesn’t have any friends any more) Matt might flinch a little at that. Foggy’s wearing a suit, something nice, the way the fabric shifts says _not polyester anymore_.  There’s a sound missing, the way that Foggy’s hair used to brush against his collar, and the smell of some hair product, cedarwood and citrus, something more expensive than old spice. Foggy cut his hair, got a new suit. Matt wonders whether he’s abandoned the ties, too, no more dinosaurs and ducks, just bland neutrals, but he’d only know that by touching or asking and he’s got no right to do that. Not any more

 

Max bumps his cold nose against Matt’s palm, like he can sense Matt’s tension.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he tells the dog. “Max, this is Foggy. Foggy, this is Max.” Foggy’s heartbeat stutters, and he takes a deep breath. “What?” asks Matt.

 

“Nothing. Just–– It’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in a while.” He clears his throat.

 

“You’ve cut your hair.” And Matt sounds a little more wistful than he’d intended, because this isn’t college anymore, and Nelson & Murdock has disintegrated into its constituent parts. And being wistful for Foggy’s defiantly impractical former haircut is a bit like being nostalgic for a childhood home after you’ve burnt it to the ground.

 

“Yeah, Jeri said something about _looking the part,_ and then her _client_ , Jessica Jones, spent about twenty minutes making fun of it, and since that’s twenty minutes out of both our billable hours, I figured I ought to do something about it. Just so you can picture it, it’s the 1940s-style Bucky Barnes cut that all the cool kids are wearing now. As opposed to the brainwashed-Bucky-Barnes cut that it used to be.” Foggy glances at his watch, mutters a curse. “I have to go, or I’ll be late for an appointment. I—take care of yourself, okay?” He wasn’t lying about the appointment, at least, and Matt successfully bites down the impulse to make a comment about _billable hours_.

 

“I’ll try, Foggy,” Matt says, and means it. He still walks away with a dull ache in the pit of his stomach.

  


***

This dog has fucked up instincts, Matt thinks. The dog shadows his every move when they’re in the apartment, walks a pace ahead of him on leash. He thought at first that the dog must just like people, but when Matt goes to a coffee shop, the dog sits half-tucked under the chair, where he tolerates the touches of curious strangers: but they earn no wag of the tail, no tilt of the head. He turns himself into a statue, impassive, and lets the affection of strangers glance off and away. People assume, mostly, that the dog is a service dog, and that keeps most of the touching-without-permission to a minimum.

 

Matt had thought that the dog trusted him because the dog trusted everyone, some kind of canine innocence left unscathed in the face of human cruelty. It turns that the dog just trusts Matt, just Matt and Frank. Which, like he said: fucked up instincts. Either he just prefers vigilantes, or he’s got a nose for truly fucked-up humans. Like one of those dogs that can sniff out cancer or tuberculosis, except that he sniffs out emotional desolation.

 

***

 

When it’s done— it’s raining. While the warehouse burns, flames eating up heroin and the bones that Frank left behind. The city lies ahead, light blurred by rain. Every time he leaves the city, each return layers on every other, another kind of homecoming. Every time he’s left, he’s carried a weapon; every time he’s returned he’s carried new scars. He thinks Red would know what it’s like,  if Red has ever left the city. It’s in your blood, it calls you home, even when it doesn’t feel like home any more. In the desert, he became a ghost: no fear, no guilt ( _what does a dead man have to be afraid of?_ ) It was only when he crossed the city limits that he felt real again, that his bones began to ache, that he felt his heart start to beat again, a ragged thrum that followed the skyline. And then, in the park—automatic rifles, the wet sound of torn flesh, the smell of blood and cordite devouring the summer sun, and everything stopped again.

 

And now? There are sirens at his back (there are always sirens at his back). The first time he felt anything other than dead was when the Irishman put that drill through his foot.  

 

***

 

There’s a thunderstorm, one of those summer things that rises up in the late afternoon, where the sky blackens, cracks open, howls and lets loose the flood.

And Max is afraid of the thunder.

 

He’s got his back up, has glued his body to Matt’s body, tremors running through his body, panting, still trying to stand between Matt and whatever’s coming, or else making sure that Matt’s not going to leave him. Max has had enough of people leaving.

 

Matt lays the duvet down in the tub, lifts Max up and into it. This is what Matt did as a kid, when all the noise was too much. It doesn’t block the noise, just makes it a little muffled, gives you a solid, hollow place to hide. He used to  pretend that it was a boat, taking him somewhere else, taking him _anywhere_ else. Matt was always good at folding himself into small places, finding ways to disappear. Now, he sits with Max in the bathtub, pats the dog’s shoulders like he can smooth the shivers out with the palms of his hands. He closes his eyes, breathes in petrichor, ozone, the earthy smell of dog.

 

The storm has nearly passed when Matt hears boots on the fire escape; he tenses, but it’s Frank. He’s soaked to the skin, Matt can hear the water in his boots, but he still smells of smoke. Matt wonders how much explosive you have to use to get something to burn in weather like this.

 

“Hey, Frank.” Max bounds out of the tub, nails clicking on tile as he prances in place, pressing himself as close to Frank as he can get, tail wagging frantically.

“Hey, Red.” Then he murmurs, “Hey, Max, hey buddy, hey hey, good dog,”   Matt uncoils himself from the tub, hands Frank a towel and then pulls his kit out from under the bathroom sink before he’s actually had time to think about it.

“You want me to stitch you up? I’ve seen your technique, and I don’t think it’s going to translate well to the cut you’ve got over your eyebrow.”

“What are you trying to say about my _technique_?”

“You put the needle in your _mouth_ and trimmed the thread with a _hunting knife_ , when you sewed up your bicep. I may be blind, but I can hardly do worse.” Frank huffs a laugh at that.

“I’ve been up for forty-six hours, and I’d rather not make it forty-eight by arguing. So fine, altarboy, have at it, but you’d better not ruin my pretty face.”

He makes Frank sit on the couch; Max sits half-sprawled across Frank’s lap, and Matt sits on the edge of the coffee table, so that Frank can turn his face toward the window and turn his bloodied cheek to Matt.

Matt finds the edges of the wound with his fingertips. It arcs through Frank’s eyebrow, stops at the sharp edge of his orbital bone. The edges are clean, made by a blade or by shrapnel, and not by another man’s fists. It bleeds sluggishly, still, and Matt blots away the congealed blood with gauze. Frank closes his eyes at the touch, doesn’t flinch. His jaw tightens, when Matt drives the needle through the skin, but he doesn’t move, just takes slow, even breaths through cracked lips and clenched teeth. It’s the first time he’s touched Frank’s face, he realizes, as he knots the first stitch. First time barehanded, anyway, no gauntlets and no closed fists. He stitches with his right hand, uses his left hand in its cast to steady Frank’s face, as if Frank needed steadying. As if Frank would flinch away from anything, needles or bullets, the burn of iodine, or Matt’s hands. The stitches are an even track, another landmark to add to the cartography of Frank’s face. His hands are warm, and Frank is cold with rain; Matt thinks he could scorch him with his fingertips, another match to the slow-burning fuse, but he keeps his hands steady. He is not a child and this is not his father’s broken skin, but it’s like riding a bike or throwing a punch, the body does not forget.

Part of him mourns the loss of what Frank was— the man that Foggy described in the courtroom, the boy who left New York, who fought in a desert, in the mountains, in fields of poppies, blooms the color of fresh blood upturned to the sun; the man who came back alive and whole against all odds. Who wore a uniform and shed blood in the name of something other than vengeance, who had a home, who had a family. But he mourns that man only abstractly, the only way you can mourn someone you never met. But this man, who was drawn up from the dust of that dead man— a man who is already shattered, only sharp edges and bare bones; a man who, therefore, he cannot ruin. Matt turns what he touches to ashes and dust, he fucks up whatever he touches. He is a well of desolation that will not be emptied, he is King Midas in reverse. And yet— a man already made of dust and bone, broken glass and gunmetal— that, perhaps, he can touch, if only to feel the blood on his fingertips. Or else Matt is just looking for another way to inch toward the edge of self-destruction.

When he ties the last knot, Frank goes to the shower, now devoid of the dog and the duvet, to wash off the rest of the blood and the rain. Matt makes coffee, because they’ll need it now or they’ll need it later, and Max sits on the blanket and watches. Matt flips the radio on, low volume, tunes it until he pulls the news out of the static, because wherever Frank goes, when things burn they make their way into the headlines and onto the airwaves, and Matt wants to know how the body count stands. ( _it’s five._ ) Matt feels a little filthy: he’s complicit, but that’s not all of it. What rises up is a memory, three weeks ago, a kid dying out in a dirty alleyway, a junkie, yeah, but still sixteen, slow heartbeat and wet breaths as the opiates told the kid’s brain to forget how to breathe. And how CPR doesn't work as well in real life as in the movies, not with the medics and the narcan still blocks away. What he thinks, first and foremost, when he hears that there were five dead is: _good._ He believes in hope. He believes in second chances. He _does_. And yet his first impulse is vicious joy. That’s what makes him feel the twist of guilt deep in his gut.

When Frank comes out of the shower, he smells like like Matt’s drugstore shampoo and plain soap.

“Following me in the news? I’m flattered.”

“Mm. They say that you killed the bad guys.”

“I am the bad guy, Red.” (He says it like he believes it, his heart beats steady. Just because you believe a thing, it doesn't make it true)

“Don’t you read the news? Karen says that we’re New Yorkers, we’re heroes.” And yeah, Matt’s trying to get a rise out of him.

“ _Heroes._ ” Frank says the word _hero_ like it tastes dirty in his mouth; he spits it out. And Matt, Matt can’t look into a mirror, but he knows that there’s no hero hidden in the glass; there are things that he would like to be, and then there’s what he is. What they are--- they’re survivors. When every other impulse is gone, they will still bare their broken teeth and fight, and when they cannot fight they will crawl toward freedom with blood in their boots, on their hands, and on their knees.  The thing about being a survivor, though: the guilt is a bitch.

Matt laughs, and it comes out a little bitter.

“Karen’s not a born New Yorker." It's not a criticism of Karen, precisely; Frank will know what he means. There's something in the blood that comes with being born in this city, a bone-deep understanding of the nature of things within the city limits. "And she’s an optimist.”

“I killed five men tonight. I’d do it again. I’m not a hero, I’m the scary monster under the bed.”

“And what does that make me?” 

“You?” Matt can hear in his voice the way his mouth curls into a smirk, a little mocking. “You’re the man without fear.”

Matt laughs in earnest at that. They’ve found a name for him, in the papers, even less accurate than the _devil of Hell’s Kitchen._

“Jesus.” _(_ he takes the lord’s name, it is not in vain, not when he has Frank Castle in his kitchen _)_ “Go to sleep, Frank.” He doesn’t pose it as a question, and Frank doesn’t fight him.

 

Frank takes the couch, and Matt goes to his bed. They settle, but Max orbits between them in the darkness, the click of nails on hardwood, trying to watch over them both, until Matt despairs and folds himself into the armchair instead, so that Max can settle between them and finally sleep. 

 

In the morning, Frank and the dog leave. Matt doesn’t (he can’t) ask them to stay. When they leave, the apartment is emptier than Matt remembers. He lies, for a while, in the hollow that Frank left on the sofa, uses the duvet that still smells like Max, closes his eyes and just breathes. Matt wants to stay here, in this hollow, forever. But Matt gets up.

       He goes for a walk.

               The sun shows its face, and the air smells of dogwood.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Maybe potentially a follow up to the other one with french toast, or at least you could read it that way. Will be more chapters, as soon as I finish them (in other words: it may be a while.)
> 
> Title from Hozier's "It Will Come Back,"  
> "Don't let it in with with no intention to keep it  
> Jesus Christ, don't be kind to it.  
> Honey don't feed it, it will come back."
> 
> (Once you name it, you have to keep it, Frank, and you keep calling him Red)


End file.
